Full circle becomes an ending ...

Well, I thought we'd closed a chapter on part of our experience of life at the farm and  yet, another turn has been taken in the story.

Many of you know about the ash saplings that were cut on the bike path, and the story that followed.   For those who don',t you can find it here, here, here and here .

... another chapter unfolded this week.

Having had the luxury of time at the farm, I've been able to bear witness to things that happen over time ... and see the deeper pattern or story of life unfolding as it takes shape  ... I have thoroughly felt the privilege of this. 

As I entered the farm on Monday, I bumped into Michael, the man who we first went to... to find out the fate of the little clump of Ash trees that had disappeared.

He had news to bear.  The big Ash tree had died ... and in the moment he told me I felt deeply that this news was to do with how deeply interconnected life is.

After that little clump of Ash disappeared and the community went through it's process of shock and grief and loss; the children stopped visiting and playing as they used to ... many, many families now just walked by, or had a very different relationship with that tiny area of land.

Occasionally I would walk down there with the children with me ... the landscape had changed and so too had all the relationships connected to that landscape.   The creativity and imagination that had been poured out and into the environment, the songs, the dance, the love, the fire and passion the games and imaginative play that I'd been witness too had ended ... and within two years, the parent tree had died.

I'd noticed this tree change and become old and brittle and saw that it didn't hold it's leaves like it used to ... and while there may be any number of logical, botanical or explainable reasons as to why this tree had died ... I knew I was seeing that it slowly died after the community of relationships it shared had ended.

This to me is the nature of having a relationship with a place and the natural world.  It teaches us profoundly.

The branches on the tree and deadwood will be lopped, and there will be something to climb on left ... yet could it be that with that one little change to the environment ... the removal of a little clump of ash trees, growing right next to the mother tree and bringing joy and love to hundreds of children ... the mother tree died with the loss of all that it loved and felt loved and sustained by energetically ...

I wonder ...